How do I catch a numpy warning like it’s an exception (not just for testing)?

It seems that your configuration is using the print option for numpy.seterr:

>>> import numpy as np
>>> np.array([1])/0   #'warn' mode
__main__:1: RuntimeWarning: divide by zero encountered in divide
array([0])
>>> np.seterr(all="print")
{'over': 'warn', 'divide': 'warn', 'invalid': 'warn', 'under': 'ignore'}
>>> np.array([1])/0   #'print' mode
Warning: divide by zero encountered in divide
array([0])

This means that the warning you see is not a real warning, but it’s just some characters printed to stdout(see the documentation for seterr). If you want to catch it you can:

1. Use numpy.seterr(all="raise") which will directly raise the exception. This however changes the behaviour of all the operations, so it’s a pretty big change in behaviour.
2. Use numpy.seterr(all="warn"), which will transform the printed warning in a real warning and you’ll be able to use the above solution to localize this change in behaviour.

Once you actually have a warning, you can use the warnings module to control how the warnings should be treated:

>>> import warnings
>>> 
>>> warnings.filterwarnings('error')
>>> 
>>> try:
...     warnings.warn(Warning())
... except Warning:
...     print 'Warning was raised as an exception!'
... 
Warning was raised as an exception!

Read carefully the documentation for filterwarnings since it allows you to filter only the warning you want and has other options. I’d also consider looking at catch_warnings which is a context manager which automatically resets the original filterwarnings function:

>>> import warnings
>>> with warnings.catch_warnings():
...     warnings.filterwarnings('error')
...     try:
...         warnings.warn(Warning())
...     except Warning: print 'Raised!'
... 
Raised!
>>> try:
...     warnings.warn(Warning())
... except Warning: print 'Not raised!'
... 
__main__:2: Warning: